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Related: About this forumCharles Koch Personally Founded Group Protecting Oil Industry Hand-Outs, Documents Reveal
http://www.republicreport.org/2014/charles-koch-personally-founded-group-protecting-oil-industry-hand-outs-documents-reveal/Charles Koch Personally Founded Group Protecting Oil Industry Hand-Outs, Documents Reveal
Posted at 11:45 am by Lee Fang
Lifestyles of the Rich Environmentalists, produced by a group called the Institute for Energy Research, is a slick web video campaign designed to lampoon Leonardo Dicaprio and will.i.am as hypocrites for supporting action on climate change. The claim is that wealthy celebrities who oppose industrial-scale pollution supposedly shouldnt fly in airplanes that use fossil fuels. The group, along with its subsidiary, the American Energy Alliance, churns out a steady stream of related content, from Facebook memes criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency, to commercials demanding approval of new oil projects like the Keystone XL, to a series of television campaign advertisements this year attacking Democratic candidates in West Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Alaska. On Capitol Hill, IER aggressively opposes any effort to repeal tax breaks afforded to the oil and gas industry.
Documents obtained by Republic Report reveal for the first time that the group was actually founded by none other than Charles Koch, the petrochemical, manufacturing, and oil refining tycoon worth an estimated $52 billion.
IER has no information about its founding members on its website, and only lists a board composed of seemingly independent conservative scholars and businessmen. Earlier reports revealed that IER/AEA has received grants from Koch-funded foundations, and its leadership includes several individuals who have at times worked for Koch or Koch-related interests. But this is the first time it has been revealed that Charles personally founded the organization.
In October of 1984, Charles, then using a Menlo Park, California address founded a non-profit called the Institute for Humane Studies of Texas. That organization briefly lost its charter in 1989 for failure to pay the Texas state franchise tax. Four years later, incorporation documents reveal, the group rebranded as the Institute for Energy Research, or IER, which later formed a subsidiary called the American Energy Alliance.
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Charles Koch Personally Founded Group Protecting Oil Industry Hand-Outs, Documents Reveal (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Aug 2014
OP
The Koch family fortune was made from oil. Not a surprise that Koch wants handouts to the
merrily
Aug 2014
#2
Tax money toward food for the hungry, bad. Free tax dollars for the puke-inducingly wealthy
GoneFishin
Aug 2014
#3
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)1. Evil = Koch - Koch = Evil
eom
merrily
(45,251 posts)2. The Koch family fortune was made from oil. Not a surprise that Koch wants handouts to the
oil industry.
Botany
(70,588 posts)4. And Daddy Koch's money was made by developing Joseph Stalin oil
merrily
(45,251 posts)5. Yes, I know. Ironic, isn't it? Greed trumps principle yet again.
The blah blah is that his contacts with the Soviets convinced him of how evil their system was and that's why he became a conservative. I am not all sure that that is how it went down. My suspicion is that he didn't mind getting rich on Soviet money.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)3. Tax money toward food for the hungry, bad. Free tax dollars for the puke-inducingly wealthy
billionaire oil companies, good.